


Matchstick Man

by Schgain



Series: Białowieża [4]
Category: Darkwood (Video Game)
Genre: A Scene Depicting Burning, A Short Torture Scene That's Barely Described, By Like 15 Minutes, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, One Sided Attraction (maybe?), Pining, Pre-Canon, Second person POV, Stranger Centric, lots of headcanons, slight unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 18:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13770102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schgain/pseuds/Schgain
Summary: The Stranger's last moments as a living person, or at least his first last moments.He just can't seem to stay down.





	Matchstick Man

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from [Matchstick Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jg4Oe3ZkhM) By Squalloscope/Paper Bird.
> 
> This work features dialogue that was inspired by the Ray Bradbury short story, Kaleidoscope. 
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!

Somewhere in the darkness, Maciek is crying.

It doesn't matter if it's his brother or his son that he's crying about. Tears roll down his cheeks all the same. Where it hits the frozen dirt they sizzle, turn to steam against the snow. You wish he'd shut up. 

Just two nights ago, Eljasz and him had gotten in a fight over this. Fists had flown. Zarek, tall and always keeping the peace, broke them apart before they could reach for something worse, but not before the Captain had heard the incident. The captain never yelled, not truly, but the lecture that followed over morning breakfast and drills had been humiliating.

"Zarek," you mutter tonight, as cold and bitter as the air, "do something about Maciek. Turn him off."

"I guess you'd know about being a turn off, eh, Łazarz?" Says Private Brunon, two beds over. You sit up with a start. A warm and broad hand rests on your shoulders and pushes you back down into your bedroll. 

"Remember what Captain said," says Zarek, voice thick and sturdy like stone. He's not satisfied with your nod, so you scoff through your nose and turn over, shaking off his hand.

You feel the dip in the floor when Zarek gets up. He crosses the room, speaks to Maciek in a low voice. The drone of meaningless comforts fills the room, and when he stops, it's silent enough that you swear you can hear the snow falling outside. 

Damned Maciek. Fucking Maciek. He left behind his son or his brother, sure, but all these other idiots left behind things too and haven't had a manic-depressive break. And the Captain-- she's lost so many of the Outsiders, and when has she shown her loss? When has she surrendered her tears to these woods?

In the dim light you see Zarek place his hand on Maciek's shoulder. He doesn't deny the action at all, but rather leans into it. It's a fraternal half-hug, distance caused by propriety. 

The spot where Zarek had touched you burns through your shirt. You force yourself to think about home and about Bethany. Maybe if you miss her hard enough, Zarek will know and will comfort you instead. 

But you know if you really missed her like that, you wouldn't want Zarek's hand on your shoulder anyways. 

\---

Over patrol the next morning, someone in the other half of the company snaps. His name is Andrei, or Aleksey, or something. You only recognize him because he was Russian. He shoots Eljasz, his dog, and himself. When your squad finds him, he is in a state of decay that should have happened over weeks, not a half a day. Mushrooms grow out of his eye sockets. The smell is rancid.

Eliezer calls dibs on his things. His flask, his cigarette case, and his boots are pilfered. You don't participate, but you admire the gun that Zarek had pulled from his cold, dead hands. How he can fire a thing that had shot its operator is behind you. 

You dig him a shallow grave and dump him in. All you can think about is when you kill yourself, you're going to do it in a way that nobody can replicate.

\---

One night, Zarek cries. 

He weeps quietly, almost imperceptibly. A hiccup and shuddering breath gives him away. You look over your shoulder at him, then roll over. 

His tears have frozen to his face. His eyes are so dark you can't tell pupil from iris. His lip, split from tripping over a tree root and landing face-first earlier today, trembles. Your fingers hover over his features. They are laconic, truth-telling, never lying but never betraying any further meaning. 

You put your hand down, and lie back. Whatever his grief is, it's not your grief. You don't deserve to touch him. 

He doesn't say anything. You wish he had.

The very next morning, Maciek has another attack while you two are stuck with each other. He screams and clutches at his head uselessly while you try to find what he's screaming about: 

Wolves.

Christ, you hate wolves.

You see them too late, and you fumble for your pistol, all the while shouting and snarling at Maciek. "Do something!" you snap, then shove him. "Fucking get out your gun and shoot them, you useless piece of shit!" 

Maciek yells something back, resentful and useless. Your frustration grows and you shove him again, pushing him away just in time for the wolves to bear down on you. He screams again, and you beat blindly at the black shape taking a bite out of your arm. You raise your gun to fire—

\---

—and you wake up at camp. 

Zarek is sitting next to your bed in a foldout chair. 

"You look like shit," he says, voice strangely gentle for his stab of honesty. 

"Fuck you very much," you reply with a groan. Your body feels like it's on fire, but very slowly, like pulsing embers in every joint. Every part of you screams to be put down, but you pull a hand out from under your blanket and vaguely paw in Zarek's direction. "What happened?"

He takes your hand. You try to ignore the feeling of your fingers coming off for the sensation of Zarek holding you. "We followed the screams to find you bludgeoning a dead wolf with a broken pistol and Maciek collapsed next to you." 

"How is he?" Your voice slurs and the room tilts. You think there were multiple wolves. There must have been more; four or six or twenty...

"The Captain wants both of you to undergo a psychiatric evaluation." Zarek technically answers the question, but it sounds like a dismissal. 

"Fuck me," you sigh, "if she thinks that quack is going to give a valuable piece of insight on sanity, she's the one that needs the check."

"Shut up, Łazarz," he snaps. Whatever you had been about to say leaks out of your mouth as drool. Idly you blot it out with the bandages on your free hand.

Zarek sighs. His hair is starting to grow in front of his eyes. "Just do the check, asshole." 

He stands, and your hand falls onto you chest with a dead thump, like punctuation to his visit. He doesn't say goodbye when he passes through the door. You wish he'd had the kindness to give you some morphine, at least. 

It's all too soon when the doctor arrives. He'd been escorted by Eliezer, apparently. The look on his face shows that he'd spent far more time with the doctor than he'd prefer. When the door opens to the makeshift clinic, you can hear the Captain talking out in the hall. It's something to focus on while the doctor talks to Maciek in his shitty stammer. The meaningless words are comforting.

"... We'll speak to lady Krimskoi about the land...dogs... not hostile...good ally..."

"Private Łazarz, was it?" 

You turn to glower at the doctor. He laughs nervously, a high, slightly hysterical giggle that's choked with cigarette smoke. His nametag says Steinman on it, but that doesn't sound right to you. You open your mouth to ask if that's really his name when he answers his question for you. "Good!" He says, and makes a note on a pad. "Now, the evaluation..."

You shut your eyes in a vain attempt to blot him out. A half-memory surfaces through your painkiller withdrawal: a team of scientists the Outsiders were charged to protect. An arborist, a mycologist, a forensic pathologist, a toxicologist, and an epidemiologist. No psychiatrists.

He asks you a question about some triangles he has on his notepad. "Fuck you," you spit, "fuck you for lying to the Captain, too." 

He splutters. You level your gaze at him. "I could have you discharged, private!" 

You curl your lip into a snarl. There's still blood on your teeth. "I could have you fucking dismembered, if we're making threats around here."

He reels back as if he'd been shoved, notepad clutched to his breath like a comfort. 

"Fuck off, doc." You say. When you spit at his feet it's pink. He wrinkles his nose at it. 

"I'll remember you, Łazarz," he hisses like he's suddenly hot shit, "I'll fucking remember you!" 

He stomps out and slams the door behind him. You can hear him all but yell at the Captain. Her voice raises and immediately overtakes him. The conversation on the other side of the wood is muffled, and one-sided. The satisfaction you feel is almost like morphine.

"Do you think that was a good idea?" asks Maciek, who sounds impossibly far away.

"Fuck you, Maciek. Fuck you."

"Fuck you too, Łazarz," he sighs, "I'll see you in hell, you son of a bitch. You were always mean."

"Should have left you to the wolves."

"You should have!" He says. His voice shatters and you are given pause. You are made to listen. "You should have given me that. That man can't discharge me. I can't go home until this tour is over. We'll never leave these woods. We're going to die here and I'll never see my little—"

"No one cares about your fucking homesickness, Maciek! Fuck you!"

"I care!" He yells. "You bastard, you son of a bitch, I care! I have something to go home to! I have something to lose! You never loved anything you soulless fuck!"

He goes quiet. You fantasize about smothering him with a pillow but it doesn't make you feel better. You fantasize about smothering yourself with a pillow, but neither does that.

You and he both stew, in your own sickness and own blood.

Later, you wake up.

It's just after dawn, but you wouldn't know it. The sunlight is choked by the trees. It's optimistic to try to shine here, smothered by leaves and fungi. Some light manages to pass through the window and illuminate this room set aside for your recovery. 

Maciek's bed is empty.

Good fucking riddance, you think with halfhearted bitterness. Later, when Zarek fetches you, it's to pull you from your bed and help you to your feet. Blood rushes to limbs that had been doing very fine without, thank you. The going is slow, but Zarek seems to have renewed some of his patience. 

"You were crying the other night," you say. Does this count as small talk now? Mortification floods you with images of your own demise. You want to slam your head into the tabletop at your brazen stupidity.

Zarek doesn't seem to notice your monologue. He tips his head and apparently thinks about it. "Was I? When I was asleep?"

"Your eyes were open," you say, "but you weren't looking at anything."

He laughs-- humorlessly-- and takes his time eating hard tack. "Probably a bad omen." When he sees your tight-lipped frown, he smiles. "Eat up," he says, "we need as many men on duty as possible."

You sigh. No rest for the wicked, after all.

Maciek shatters, well and truly, that night. You hear it, don't witness it. Later, you learn that he broke into the stores and stole half the squad's supplies and made a break for the darkness. Someone had called after him, and men armed with bayonets and flashlights prowled the perimeter of the lawn, daring to hope he'll come back.

No one argues when you curse him, now. 

The same night you hear Zarek and the Captain discuss things outside, but few words can be understood. 

"Priority is recovery of supplies so... men won't die."

"...thal force...not necessary."

"Doct... trouble. A citizen reported missing....responsible?"

"Can't ru..." 

You drift off again. Your dreams are flat, ugly, and planeless. Flatland's triangles and polygons pervade you and leave you feeling more restless than you had been when you hadn't napped. Most sleep is like that for you. 

You wish the mycologist had been the one to survive, if only so he could tell you if it was the mushrooms doing that to you.

God you're hungry.

\---

You wake up to the smell of wood smoke.

You crack open one eye, and what it sees tells you nothing: a moldy wooden wall. 

Huh.

Wood smoke.

You catapult yourself to sitting upright.

"Fire," you say, voice hoarse. You try again. "Fire!"

Eliezer and Brunon wake up. "What?" The former asks. 

"There's a fire-- smoke. Investigate!" You flail your injured arms uselessly. Thankfully the two are too sleepy to argue the semantics of you bossing them around. The three of you get up, lace up your boots, and rush out the door. 

Half your encampment is in flames. You let out a scream of rage and pull your scarf over your mouth, then dive in. You can't hear Eliezer or Brunon over the roar of the fire. 

The heat is unbearable. Your clothes are heavy and stiff under it, and you are forced to crawl on your belly. All you can see is gold and pink, interspersed with the black charred remains of your company's home. 

"Captain!" You scream. You sound like a child, begging for his mother. "Captain! _Valora!_ "

Of course, there is no response. 

Something grabs your ankle. You _shriek_ and roll onto your back: it's someone in the hazard suit, visor choked with soot. It yanks you towards it and you can't find anything in you to struggle. The hazard suit drags you out of the blaze, occassionally beating out flames that lick you. 

It tosses you unceremoniously onto frozen grass, and you curl fetally with a whimper. Only now in the cold air do you realize the extent of your burns. They throttle you, pulsing under your skin with feverish heat. Charred bits of you flake off when you move. 

The man in the hazard suit puts a finger to his visor and walks back towards the blaze. You shut your eyes and cry yourself to unconsciousness.

 

\---

 

"I think this one is still breathing. I've never seen him... wait. A key, a journal. He must know. He must..."

Something reaches under your jacket. You're flipped onto your back with a low wheeze. You can't find the energy to open your eyes.

You're lifted, with little regard for comfort, and carried. You drift in and out of consciousness, as fleeting as butterflies. Vaguely, you're scared. Mostly, you hurt. A new wave of pain happens when he tosses you onto a wooden floor.

More words come. A mixture of gibberish and english. You crack open an eye in time to see the syringe, and its trajectory to your throat.

Your scream gets cut off by its entry, choked into nothingness.

He screams at you from above, words that don't make sense. You can't parse his yelling. Your throat is on fire, a chemical burning sensation that worsens with every swallow. Your larynx seems swollen, but you're no doctor.

Doctor.

Recognition lights behind your eyes. His words don't make sense.

"I sometimes hear her voice." 

Dimly, you think that you can't relate. Something about the medicine activates. You fall asleep to the sound of the doctor's ramblings.

The next time you awaken, you're sitting. Your head dangles uselessly on your chest, and your breathing is ragged, slow. 

This is a bad way to die, you say, but no words come out. Ropes crisscross your front and are tied in sloppy knots around your wrists. 

You want to curse him, to be petty and mean and cruel, to tell him he can't even bind a man right. But you can't find your words. Your throat does not formulate them properly. 

And when he hits you, you can't even scream.


End file.
